'Internet porn a growing problem for players'

Addiction to internet pornography is a growing problem among cash-rich Premiership players with time on their hands according to Peter Kay, the chief executive of the Sporting Chance clinic.

Sporting Chance has been assisting sportsmen and women with addictive
illnesses since its foundation in 2000.

Kay revealed that while there have been high-profile cases of gambling, drink
and drug problems among professional footballers, an increasing number are now
switching on their laptops and accessing pornographic websites to fill their
time between playing matches and training.

'When you start going into a porn site it leads on to other porn sites and
then maybe more risky material,' Kay told BBC Radio Five Live.

'It must be stressed that if a 21-year-old is scanning a bit of porn and
accessing pleasure from it, doing that once then that is not unusual and nor is
it a problem.

'It becomes a problem when he is doing it 14, 15, 16 times and then when he
stops, he is playing a football game and he is thinking `I can't wait to get
back to that site'.'

Five Live also interviewed an unnamed Premiership player who admitted how he
had fallen foul of internet sites offering thrills of one description or
another.

'You can get hooked on anything, going on one site for two minutes isn't
enough,' he said.

'You don't realise how much you're spending until you see it on your bill at
the end of the month.

'On porn websites you have got advertisements for the porn and you end up
spending more money on there. It's kind of like kids in a sweet shop.

'We finish at lunchtimes with our jobs and you can sit there for hours on
end.'